D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse

New free content from WotC - the latest 4-page Unearthed Arcana introduces six new races: astral elf, autognome, giff, hadozee, plasmoid, and thri-kreen.

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Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

All due respect, that's like saying that Star Trek and Magnum P. I. should be mixed together because both feature ships (water boats, star vessels, both shops, right?).

Spelljammer is not an interplanetary Setting at all: it's all in the Prime Material, just the outer space parts.

I for one would love a Magnum PI Star Trek crossover, they have done weirder crossovers then that, like that Star Trek Webster crossover.

 

[Charlaquin]

Giff had all sorts of interesting traits, but nearly all of the best ones were cultural, like their obsession with guns. Since we dont have cultural traits anymore, naturally many races will suffer.

If they didn’t have any non-cultural traits that set them apart, they truly were humans with hats.

 

[Mistwell]

Shape self
This is 50% fluff. It lets you effortlessly change your body type from Gloop of the Herculoids to an anmie style goo-person on the fly. There is, however, no mechanical benefit to either (other than maybe slipping out of restraints, which you could already do with the Amorphous ability) and you can only summon up to two legs, two arms, and one head. Which limits the shenanigans.

Wild shape: You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.
IE You can gain the benefits of your wild shape form, while changing your body type back to something able to pick up a weapon, and speak, and cast spells.

 

[humble minion]

Hmm. There's some i like a lot and some that makes me scratch my head a bit.

I like that the Astral Elf gets to choose which ability score their free cantrip and Radiant Soul ability key off. Takes away one little bit of annoyance, and i hope this becomes standard. Radiant Soul I'm not sure i like. Does 5e really need to make it HARDER for PCs to die? Trance Proficiencies I'm pretty sure i don't like. I think it (and I believe there was a magic item or something in Tasha's which effectively gave proficiency in every tool?) is a reflection that WotC believe that tool proficiencies are too hard to get for their relative usefulness in-game. This is an issue that should be fixed in character creation/advancement tweaks in 5.5 rather than be patched over by retrofitting magic items and new racial features in. And it risks niche protection as well. If I'm a PCs of a non-Astral Elf ancestry, who has a rarely-used skill proficiency that i took for character concept reasons, I'm going to be a bit annoyed when a situation arises that FINALLY means my proficiency can be used in-game ... and then the elf takes a nap and suddenly knows it as well as i do. Possibly better, especially if I'm a martial character with lower mental ability scores.

Autognome looks powerful. I do like that even though they get natural armour, they also get a bunch of other features too. WotC used to overvalue natural armour I think, it looks like they've re-evaluated that. They're affected by cure spells which is a little hinky from a thematic point of view, but seriously, the game would almost break for them if they weren't, so i don't mind that just as a practical measure.

Giff seem ... bland. As others have said, WotC is still struggling to make Large PC races work properly. I never knew much about Spelljammer - could giff swim back then? The melee damage re-roll ... hmmm. It's yet another attempt to make the big bruiser ancestry work, but on a species who are best known for their use of ranged gunpowder weapons it seems a bit out of place...

Hadozee seem like a flexible option with climb and glide, and I'm so glad they didn't limit the useages of glide per long rest or anything like that. DMs who don't pay attention to ceiling heights etc are going to hate them. The bonus action Use Object is cute, not sure how much applicability it'll have, but it's nice that it's there. There just seems to be one tiny thing lacking with these guys (flavour-wise, not power-wise), maybe a circumstantial advantage on a skill or something.

Plasmoid - yeah, the squeezing aspect of the amorphous ability seems like it'd be used very, very rarely given the limitation of having to strip down and leave all your gear behind. And it'd be best used in solo stealth missions, which aren't always the most fun for uninvolved PCs. Agree with the idea posted above about donning/doffing armour as a bonus action, that's really clever. Do they revert to blob form if incapacitated? And what happens to your armour/gear if you do? Or even if you revert to blob form voluntarily? Does magic plate armour re-size to suit blobs? Language is not entirely clear, but it'd be a pain to have to re-don all the clothes, gear etc that you're wearing that assume you have arms/legs after un-incapacitating yourself. This ability needs a fair bit of work I reckon. The pseudopod ability looks limited. Hell, about 3/4 of its text is devoted to very strictly limiting it.

Thri-kreen looks powerful, but done ok from a thematic point of view. If I had to take anything off it to balance, it'd probably be the chameleon ability, which i don't think was ever a major thri-kreen feature (whereas poison and natural weapons, which were, don't appear here). Darkvision seems to be a nod to sensory abilities in general rather than being a historic thri-kreen thing, as far as i remember they always had a great sense of smell, but that's not an easy thing to adjudicate. Extra hands .. I'm not really a good optimiser, so I'm trying to work out what the power combos would be here. Dual wielding while using a shield hardly seems like a gamebreaker, nor does having some melee weapons in-hand while using a bow just in case you get engaged up close. Nothing I can immediately come up with seems terrible - though that's more of an artefact of the restrictive two-weapon fighting rules rather than anything else. Telepathy seems very strong, but i think needs clarification - can the creatures you contact talk back? It's not entirely clear. This could be a pain in-game something though, as specifically you communicate with others, it's not like telepathic bond where everyone can communicate with everyone. If the telepathy allows replying, I hope you like feeling like a telephone switchboard. Also, not a word about custom-fitting armour for non-standard anatomy etc, or some magic items not being usable. It looks like that's a concept that has gone the way of the dodo. Presumably you can attune two pairs of magic gauntlets though?

In general, i like that natural armour is no longer being overvalued. I like that darkvision is no longer being handed out with quite such a lavish hand. I suspect that we'll see a rewrite of humanoid-specific spells like Charm Person etc in 5.5 if the trend for non-humanoid PC races continues - though to be fair that's going to be an annoyance that affects PC spellcasterss more than NPCs as NPC/monster stat blocks normally just have a non-type-specific 'charm' action listed rather than the tightly-defined spells that PCs have to work with. So it's not like being an autognome comes with major hidden immunities.

I do wish that they'd bring back limitations as balancing factors to races. Sunlight sensitivity got such kickback it seemed to spook the designers, but it was such a BIG penalty so i think they've overreacted by never having disadvantages ever again. Disadvantage on swim checks for thri-kreen or autognomes seems perfectly reasonable, for instance - it'd be flavourful and a useful balance tool without being quite so universally intrusive.

Also - racial feats. They'd add a LOT to some of these races and are a way to bring back some of the historic features while minimising balance problems somewhat - a feat to give natural weapons or poison or even blindsense to thri-kreen, all sorts of weirdness for autognomes, perhaps critical immunity or acid touch attack or the ability to mimic Change Self for plasmoids? I think it's a pity that the Ravenloft races didn't get any racial feats, the not-vampire and not-zombie in particular were crying out for them, I hope WotC doesn't miss that bus again.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Wild shape: You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so.
IE You can gain the benefits of your wild shape form, while changing your body type back to something able to pick up a weapon!

. . . That's kinda terrifying. Imagine a Brown Bear that sprouts a hand from its face to be able to grab a weapon. Thanks, I hate it.

 

[Parmandur]

I for one would love a Magnum PI Star Trek crossover, they have done weirder crossovers then that, like that Star Trek Webster crossover.

Alright, I admit, I want Space Magnum P. I. now. But still, Planescape and Spelljammer are very different genres, not to mention setups.

 

[Scribe]

OK, so what do we have here....

One thing I've noted a few times, is that the best way forward for Wizards is to generalize because they certainly are not going to tie themselves down by specializing, in a specific setting, it simply provides no meaningful benefit, that is what I believe the main take away with a lot of these changes are. We can, and have, debated the meaning, impact, reason, value, of race (and I will use race because its 4 letters I can type with my left hand quickly and its the 'official' term even as of this document) changes to date, starting with Tasha's, then the Spooky UA Lineages (aka Templates) and so on and so on, down through the months.

What I believe Wizards has finally arrived at, is "we are not going to tell you what they are, only the mechanics of how they operate." Now I believe this actually has benefits, even if I personally do not like it, because I have come to understand that I dont like it because I have a personal interpretation of D&D that I wish to be supported and promoted, but so does everyone else.

So, what does Wizards do? Remove things which are setting dependent, and I think this will be clear as we go.

ASI: Generic.
Language: Generic.
Creature Type: NOT Generic. I hope, really really really HOPE, that they lean into this as a way to differentiate races mechanically in how the wider ruleset functions.
Life Span: Generic.
Height and Weight: Generic. While I know a few mention 'within the range of humans' is large, I'm sorry but thats just giving Wizards a reason they dont need. This more than anything is just a way to make it Generic...and the reason is very clear as @Yaarel said in their other thread.

Heh, and with any human height possible, I can finally get my Norse tall dvergar officially!

That's it right there. Same with the removal of Alignment, ASI, Language, Culture, etc, etc. Its because Wizards doesnt want to be in the business of telling us what something is, again, only how it functions.

"But Scribe, people can already do that within their own settings!"

Yes, I know. Trust me, I know. It doesnt matter though, because this is actually the path of least resistance for Wizards, provide the mechanics, and then sell settings which further define IN THAT SETTING, what a race is or how it relates to the world around it.

Anyway!

Anything 'Generic' or "Human in effect." in my opinion needs to be dropped, and thankfully it appears thats how these are set up. Which is good, because otherwise you would see '..Human...' in other races definitions, and that would be jarring first of all, and tilting for me personally...

If my prediction in the previous bullet point is correct, that would mean astral elves are defined by their cantrip selection and radiant soul. Which would be consistent with @Scribe ’s prediction that ancestries in the anniversary edition will be defined by size, creature type, and two or three traits.

This Astral Elf cements the fact that WotC is moving away from subraces as a design tool.

Yep, absolutely looks like what would normally be a subrace, is now getting broken out. The alternative is that you have a 'subrace' definition like Fallen Aasimar which would read.

Necrotic Shroud: Other creatures within 10 feet of you that can see you must each succeed on a Charisma saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier) or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.

1. Your transformation lasts for 1 minute or until you end it as a bonus action. During it, once on each of your turns, you can deal extra necrotic damage to one target when you deal damage to it with an attack or a spell. The extra necrotic damage equals your level.
2. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

No, Wizards is going to want to pad that out with the various other parts that define mechanically what an Aasimar is, I think.

@Scribe I'm curious to see your opinion about this. Seeing this races, and seeing this as the first time they appear in 5e, do you think they have enough crunch in them?

So lets see.

Astral Elf​

I can for sure see why @Charlaquin is calling out the High Elf. Its very similar to the point where I bet this is the template for 5.5 or whatever we are calling it.

Radiant Soul is the 'subrace' ability (like Fallen Aasimar noted above) and it feels like Trance Proficiency is ~= Elf Training/Language? I mean its ok, but its not really calling out to me.

Honestly, this is a High Elf to me. Quite Meh.

Autognome​

Creature Type! Construct! - Please let this remain.
Armour Casing: Cool
Built for Success: Cool, takes a bit of RNG out of things potentially.
Mechanical Nature: Cool, and appropriate.
Sentry's Rest: Cool.
Specialized Design: Defined by the player, a theme now.
True Life: Mending, great! The healing spells? Remove! If you are a construct, you are a construct! I have no reason to expect they would remove it, but I know thats the feedback I will provide.

All in all, especially if you removed the healing spells from functioning, I'd be very positive on this race design.

Giff​

Size: Just make them large. Come on. Just figure it out Wizards and do it.
Damage Dealer/Hippo Build: Eh, after Autognome....ok. You hit stuff, and should be Large.

This doesnt do anything for me.

Hadozee​

Dexterous Feet: OK.
Glide: OK.

Big shrug.

Plazmoid​

Awesome.

Creature Type: Ooze! THIS MUST STAY.
Size: Medium or Small. Sure.
Amorphous: Very cool.
Darkvision: OK
Hold Breath: Eh? OK, but just make it so it doesnt breath imo.
Natural Resilience: Makes sense.
Shape Self: Cool.

Amorphous sells me pretty much by itself. I dig this.

Thri-keen​

Creature Type: MONSTROSITY. I was really afraid they would make all PC's 'humanoid' I REALLY hope these all stick.
Size: Sure
Carapace: Yep, and bonus stealth, I like it.
Darkvision: Zzz, ok.
Secondary Arms: Neat.
Sleepless: Interesting. 3 Races that dont sleep the same. Keep.
Telepathy: Cool. Need to be able to see prevents some shenanigans, but thats ok.

Cool, stuff, and different enough to be interesting to me.

All in all, a fine enough selection, but I think the 'weird' 3 all are far far more interesting than the rest. I just wish Autognome's couldnt be healed, and hope they keep the different Creature Types.

My Rank

1. Autognome
2. Plazmoid/Thri-keen
3. Giff
4. Hadozee
5. Astral Elf

EDIT: The Giff and Hadozee really suffer from the removal of the Racial ASI 'dial'. If Wizards had been able to hold onto that, they could have been more interesting options, than what we have now.

Gutted about the new playable species format. The things which make them unique and interesting are just being thrown out.

Some of it, but that 'some' is setting specific. That is the big thing people need to take away so that (at least for me) they can stomach the changes without getting tilted.

Things such as lifespan have a massive effect on worldbuilding, and how a species sees the word and interacts with it. A creature like a thri-keen which struggles to make it to 30 will have a completely alien worldview and society even compared to humans, let alone longer lived species.

I do think its interesting they will tell us something is long lived, but not short lived. I'm not sure what social pressures they have to do that for, or if its just an oversight. I think the updated Orc will confirm it though.

Just to be clear, the new format doesn't exclude any of what you're suggesting.

It does, by not defining it. That is something people are going to have to come to grips with being a 'feature' going forward, but the removal of definition to some is a flaw.

If this UA don’t sell you on the new racial format, I think nothing will…

I'm not gaining anything, but at least I have reasoned with it enough to understand why Wizards is doing it. If its races like Astral Elf, or Hadozee? That isnt exciting. If its Autognomes and Plazmoids, thats cool. Giff is kind of this weird middle ground, where it clearly wants you to lean into a specific build, but its far less interesting than the top 3 imo.

All in all, I believe I understand why Wizards has made the changes they have made. I think they will make the 'default' D&D less defined, and wont tell you what a race is, but how it functions.

It will be up to the players or DM's to determine what a race is, its place in a setting or at your table, and thats how they will go moving forward.

They MAY define things further in setting books, but I HIGHLY doubt it.

 

[overgeeked]

. . . That's kinda terrifying. Imagine a Brown Bear that sprouts a hand from its face to be able to grab a weapon. Thanks, I hate it.

Well, thinking the plasmoid could do that is a terrible reading of wildshape.

"if the new form is physically capable of doing so."

Is a brown bear physically capable of sprouting a hand from its face? Nope. So neither is a plasmoid druid wildshaped into a brown bear.

 

[Mecheon]

The Astral Elf and Autognome sound A LOT like the Void Elf and Mechagnome races in World of Warcraft. I get that these races might be Spelljammer related, but to me - a WoW player - it just seems like WOTC ripping off the game.

Nah, see, Wizards figured what people wanted was MECHAGNOMES TO ACTUALLY BE, MECHAGNOMES, BLIZZARD, the ones from Wrath, not these cyborg diaper gnomes, and I say this as a fan of gnomes...

But, my justifiable gripes aside (blizz please you introduced them against the vulpera), I am down for these. I think all I'd change is give the Giff some sort of hippo skin 'You're just, able to take fire and gunpowder damage better" ability to lean into that gunpower thing folks think is missing

 

[Parmandur]

The Astral Elf and Autognome sound A LOT like the Void Elf and Mechagnome races in World of Warcraft. I get that these races might be Spelljammer related, but to me - a WoW player - it just seems like WOTC ripping off the game.

That said... I'll be folding those two races into my current campaign (which I originally based on WoW lore).

I mean...Blizzard borrowed a couple things from D&D.